


City of Dust

by pipermca



Series: Song Fics [2]
Category: Transformers (Dreamwave Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Genocide, Psychological Torture, Songfic, The Fall of Praxus, Torture, War, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 14:32:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12191757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipermca/pseuds/pipermca
Summary: The Decepticons needed a witness.





	City of Dust

**Author's Note:**

> _Hot and burning in your nostrils_  
>  _Pouring down your gaping mouth_  
>  _Your molten bodies, blanket of cinders_  
>  _Caught in the throes, and_  
>  _Woah oh - oh your city lies in dust, my friend_  
>  -[Cities in Dust](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAl5Azlzj1M), as covered by The EverLove

Dust. Smoke. Burning heat. The scent of burnt metal.

A crushing weight on his frame. His legs were pinned. His sensors were dulled with pain.

His ventilation systems struggled to pull in enough air to cool his systems. Error messages scrolled on his HUD. 

Damage was detailed and catalogued. He was leaking energon from several wounds. His leg struts were crushed. His sensor wings were mangled. 

He could not move.

“Help!” he cried. 

He arched his frame, trying to shift the heavy weight off of himself. He received nothing for his effort except another bolt of agony through his side. 

The heat he felt singeing his frame seemed to grow hotter.

“Someone! Help me!”

How long had he lain here, offline? Groons? An orn? And what had happened?

Vague recollections of a warning from Civil Defense, followed immediately by the ground shaking. Explosions in the distance. Sirens. Explosions, closer this time. The roar of engines in the sky. The other merchants on his street all looking out of their shops. A glow in the sky. A plume of smoke. An audial-shattering clap of thunder. Flying through the air, screaming...

The ground under him shuddered. The weight on top of him shifted. A fresh stab of pain as his frame was compressed more.

“Please... Someone. Anyone!” he wheezed through choked vents.

He heard rubble shifting. “Ahh, here’s one,” said a voice.

“Yes! Please. Help me!” he called, pushing against the weight pressing down on him.

“Be calm. I see you. Just a klik while I pull away some of this debris.” He weight on him shifted, then was blessedly lifted from him. He squirmed, trying to pull his legs free, but a hand rested on his back between his twisted sensor wings. “Don’t struggle. Almost there.”

Finally his legs were freed, and hands lifted him, turned him over gently. He looked up into the face of a black and white seeker who smiled down at him. “See? Good as my word. Your legs are too damaged to walk on, so I’ll carry you.” The seeker lifted him into his arms. “I am Ramjet. What is your designation, little Praxian?”

“Bluestreak,” he said. “Thank you for saving me!” He finally looked around, and saw nothing but rubble. “My shop... The other merchants... We should see if anyone else is still alive!”

Ramjet shook his helm. “There are no other spark signatures in the wreckage. You were the only one.”

“No...” Bluestreak clung to Ramjet’s chest armor. Cygnus, his apprentice. Greenbough, who owned the sweet shop across the street. Treadlight, the cute little Urayan who made the most amazing tapestries. He reeled at the loss. “They’re all gone?”

“Indeed,” Ramjet said. He fired his thrusters and rose a few meters into the air. “Let’s make sure, all right?”

They flew a klik or so. Bluestreak stared around. The sky was black with thick smoke, and an eerie reddish glow lit the horizon all around. Fires burned in the rubble here and there, and sparks leapt from wires protruding from wreckage. The devastation was complete and thorough. “What happened?” Bluestreak asked, his vocalizer thick with static. 

They heard a voice, pleading the same way Bluestreak had done. 

“Listen! There’s someone alive down there!”

Ramjet slowed, then flew lower. He peered into an opening in the wreckage. Craning his neck, Bluestreak saw a mech on the ground, peering up through the opening. “Help me!” the mech called when he saw them fly over.

“I see him.” Ramjet stopped and hovered. “I have commed for assistance.”

“Hang on! Someone’s coming to help you!” Bluestreak yelled down at the other mech, waving an arm. He looked up at Ramjet. “If you put me down, you can help him out.”

“No need,” said Ramjet, looking up at the arrival of another seeker. He pointed down at the mech on the ground. “A survivor. Handle it.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the other seeker. Then he aimed his blaster and shot the other mech, right through his chest. 

The mech slumped to the ground, lifeless.

“No!” Bluestreak cried. He looked up at Ramjet again, his mouth agape. “Why... Why did he do that?”

Ramjet smiled down at Bluestreak with red optics. “Let’s find out, shall we?” 

They flew on.

He was still processing what he had just witnessed. Bluestreak heard an irregular thudding noise. “What is that noise?” he asked, dreading the answer. Each thud was marked by a burst of light in the distance.

“We are just finishing up the job,” Ramjet said calmly.

They flew on. 

They passed another collapsed building, where five mechs stood lined up against what remained of the building’s outer wall. Ramjet paused to watch two seekers systematically put blaster bolts in each mech’s spark casings. One by one, the mechs crumpled to the ground.

“Why?” Bluestreak screamed. “Why are you doing this?” He twisted in the seeker’s arms. “Put me down. Let me go!”

Ramjet tightened his grip. “Now, now, my little Praxian, you don’t want me to drop you, do you?” He flew higher. “Let’s get you some answers.”

They flew into a choking cloud of smoke, so thick that Bluestreak couldn’t even see Ramjet’s optics glowing above him. He wheezed, his vents still not clear of the dust they had sucked in earlier. His processor was fuzzy with pain, and he fought against believing what he had seen. 

Surely this was all some horrible dream.

Suddenly, they emerged into clear air, and Bluestreak realized they were outside of Praxus. Ramjet angled downwards, towards a shuttle that was parked on the ground. The shuttle had the purple insignia of one of the factions warring on the other side of the planet; Bluestreak could not remember which faction was which.

Ramjet landed and carried Bluestreak into the shuttle. Two mechs, one grey and one blue, stood inside, watching several monitors.

“Lord Megatron, I have retrieved a survivor for you,” Ramjet said, turning so that Bluestreak could face the other two mechs. 

The larger grey mech turned and took a step towards them. “Very good, Ramjet.” He turned his gaze to Bluestreak. “And what is your designation?”

Turning his head, Bluestreak remained silent.

“He said his designation is Bluestreak, Lord Megatron,” Ramjet said.

“Very well.” Megatron reached out and gripped Bluestreak’s chin firmly, twisting his helm to look at him. “Bluestreak, I want you to see what we have done here.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Bluestreak spat. 

Megatron shook his helm. “Oh no. You have not seen nearly enough.” He gestured at the monitors behind him.

Focusing on the monitors, Bluestreak’s optics widened. “No...” he whispered.

Each monitor showed some new atrocity. Mechs being shot point-blank. A pede coming down on the helm of a mech who was trapped in the rubble. The brilliant explosion of a thermite bomb detonating, vaporizing the building that had been there just a moment before.

“No!” Bluestreak yanked his chin free of Megatron’s grasp and turned his head away. “I won’t watch you do this.”

“Ah, but we won’t be giving you a choice.” Bluestreak felt himself being put into a chair, then he squawked as his arms were yanked behind him and he was cuffed. “Soundwave, please make sure our guest appreciates what we are doing here.”

The other mech, the boxy blue one, stepped closer and roughly tipped Bluestreak’s helm to the side. Bluestreak yelped as Soundwave ripped his data port open, and he felt a cord roughly shoved into the socket.

“Praxian: will watch,” Soundwave said in a monotone. 

Bluestreak looked up at the monitors again, at the atrocities displayed on them, and offlined his optics. But he could still see the images. He could still hear the screams. 

Soundwave was streaming the feeds straight into his mind.

From the air, another carpet of bombs was dropped. Bluestreak recognized it as one of the business centres in the city. Mechs ran for cover from the bombs that fell towards them, but they all were caught in the searing blast of heat. The silence after their screams was deafening.

“Please, no...”

A mech dragged himself along the street, his lower half melted beyond recognition. He reached out to the seeker standing before him, who levelled a rifle at his helm and fired.

“Stop this.”

Another mech cried, his voice warbling in pain, as a seeker pulled his sensor wings from his back. The seeker laughed, his hands streaked in energon, and started on his other limbs.

“No! No more! Why are you doing this?”

A group of mechs ran, skulking from shadow to shadow, but obviously they had been seen. They screamed as three mechs ran towards them with lit flamethrowers. Their frames melted as they ran, shrieking in pain, until they finally stopped in half-melted pools of their own metal. Silent.

“Primus, please. Stop this! Why are you doing this??”

Bluestreak felt the cord yanked from his port, and the feed stopped. He left his optics offline and slumped, his frame shaking with sobs. “I don’t understand. Why me? Why us?”

He heard a mech crouch next to him, and a hand was placed on his knee. “My dear Bluestreak, I need you to pass along a very important message.”

Bluestreak onlined his optics and looked at the large grey mech. “I’m not doing anything for you,” he spat.

“It’s a simple message, and it’s the answer to your question: why? Why are we doing this?” When Megatron saw that he had Bluestreak’s attention, he smiled. “There is a war waging for the soul of this planet, Bluestreak. It is a war for the very spark of Cybertron. And in this war, you are either on a side, or you are against everyone.”

Shaking his helm, Bluestreak said, “Praxus is neutral.” He wracked his memory for what he remembered hearing about the war being fought on the other side of the planet. “Praxus is neutral! Both sides in the war have merits. Both sides have flaws. The city elders wouldn’t pick one over the other. They couldn’t!”

Megatron gestured up at the monitors behind him. Bluestreak didn’t look at them, but kept his optics focused on the grey mech. “I don’t think Praxus is neutral anymore.” He stood and turned to look at the monintors. “In fact... I would say it’s not **anything** anymore. Wouldn’t you agree, Ramjet?”

“Yes, Lord Megatron,” the seeker said. 

“So, Bluestreak,” Megatron said, turning to face the Praxian again. “I want you to tell everyone what happens to cities... to mechs... who cannot pick a side in this war.” He grabbed Bluestreak’s chin, tilting it up to look him in the optics. “I want you to tell all of Cybertron what happens when you don't side with the Decepticons.”

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose this is cheating a bit, since I first heard this song in the E3 trailer for [Fall of Cybertron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyW5KMMDjZw). I loved the song and went looking for info about it. I found out that A) it was a cover (it was originally written/performed by Siouxsie and the Banshees), and B) the lyrics are about the fall of Pompeii.
> 
> Bluestreak has been on my mind a lot lately, since several of the fics I'm working on feature him... And wherever Bluestreak goes, so do his demons. My heart aches for him whenever I think what he had to go through during the last moments of Praxus. When I listened to this song, it was far too easy for me to substitute Praxus for Pompeii and... hence this fic. (I also realize that my fic isn't complaint with any particular continuity... It's merely what my brain came up with.)


End file.
